The CEO of the organization most militantly dedicated to enforcing copyright at the expense of its customers, its business model, its credibility and the basic protections of the Constitution wrote an op/ed piece for the New York Times demonstrating the chance to abuse his enemies with half truths and invective is more important than rebuilding the credibility of his organization.

What are the hyperbolic mistruths? That SOPA and PIPA would have amounted to censorship, would have required ISPs and content providers to monitor content posted by subscribers to ensure none are violating copyrights and that it was demagoguery rather than democracy that made up the flood of public outrage that stopped both bills in Congress and ultimately killed them (in Sherman's opinion, until some new conspiracy can be crafted).

The enforcement requirements in both SOPA and PIPA that made site owners responsible for any copyright violations committed by their subscribers, the no-trial, no-evidence process by which whole sites could be shut down following unsupported complaints by an alleged copyright owner and the chilling effect both would have on even content that is not covered by copyright has nothing to do with censorship, Sherman wrote.

All those things are just good law enforcement, protection of the copyrights of the music industry which is struggling to survive despite more than 10 years of experience with and opportunity to adapt to the new realities of the entertainment market.

Most of that time it spent chasing down grandmothers to try to scare consumers into buying overpriced CDs rather than download or stream just the content they wanted.

"Our digital revenues, at one-third of industry income (and now more than 50 per cent in the US), substantially surpass those of other creative industries, such as films, books and newspapers," according to IFPI CEO Frances Moore, in her editorial contribution to the report.

Maybe Sherman should have read the IFPI report or looked around for the "government reports" backing up his case before crying poor-mouth about an industry that even on its worst was leaked cash from every orifice because it kept running out of places to keep it.

Pot calls kettle a hypocrite

Sherman also accuses Google, Wikipedia, and other sites of violating their own support of net neutrality by arguing on their home pages that SOPA and PIPA would hurt their businesses, the services they provide to customers, the choices customers make about what to view or use online and force both site owners and customers into the role of enforcer for the RIAA.

That's editorializing, Sherman wrote, not an objective presentation of the facts.

Net neutrality, first of all, has nothing to do with editorializing. It's the principal saying vendors that own the pipes through which all the Internet's content flows can't pick and choose which content can flow through their pipes based on whether it competes with them or not.

Supporting net neutrality, in other words, would require opposing SOPA and PIPA, both of which would make site owners and bandwidth providers liable for complaints (even without proof) that content provided through their services was in violation of someone's copyright.